William Styron – författare

These recordings of twentieth-century American authors interpreting their own works were highly praised when first released in the 1960s. Today the cultural and historical value of these recordings makes them an essential part of our literary heritage.

In this collection, James Baldwin reads from Giovanni''s Room and Another Country, exploring the challenges of being black and gay in mid-twentieth century America. William Styron reads about a disabled child finding brief moments of joy in Lie Down in Darkness, his novel about a troubled Southern family. James Jones reads the most famous passage from his celebrated World War II novel, From Here to Eternity. And Philip Roth does a hilarious comic turn in a bizarre scene from his early novel, Letting Go.

Additionally, Nelson Algren reads from his most famous novel, The Man with the Golden Arm, about the decline and fall of a drug dealer and card sharp. Bernard Malamud''s devastating selection from The Magic Barrel portrays poor, embittered old Jews who achieve a moment of grace after fierce antagonism. In John Updike''s story from Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories, a seminary student working as a lifeguard draws a witty and lyrical contrast between saving souls and bodies. And James Jones'' account of a World War II battle in Japan in The Thin Red Line shows young soldiers at their most heroic and perilous moments.

Lie Down in Darkness traces the tragic fate of a Southern family with acute sensitivity, in a style that mirrors the inner lives of its four major characters. The parents are estranged, with each favoring one of their two daughters. The father dotes on Peyton, the family beauty, while the mother is devoted to Maudie, the disabled child. The novel, told in flashbacks, opens with Peyton''s funeral after her emotional unraveling and suicide. The passage Styron reads here shows Maudie''s magical encounter with the workman, Bennie.

A military hospital is the setting for this darkly humorous play by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Darkness Visible and Sophie’s Choice. In the summer of 1943, a young Marine named Wally Magruder arrives at a Navy hospital in the American South, stricken with what doctors diagnose as a severe case of syphilis. Trapped in the stifling confines of the urology ward, Magruder and his fellow patients rebel against the authoritarian Dr. Glanz, a physician who delights in the power that sickness gives him. But as they seek to reclaim their identities against dehumanization, the ward becomes a hell more real than any of them could have imagined. Inspired by Styron’s own experience, In the Clap Shack is a searing indictment of military brutalization and a brilliant defense of individualism and personal freedom from the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Confessions of Nat Turner and other acclaimed works.This ebook features new manuscripts, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the William Styron archives at Duke University.

The author of Sophie’s Choice, “the foremost writer of his generation,” portrays a rebellion by two marines on a miles-long march in the Carolina heat (The Wall Street Journal).

The “magnificent” Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times–bestselling novel about the preacher who led America’s bloodiest slave revolt (The New York Times).The Confessions of Nat Turner is William Styron’s complex and richly drawn imagining of Nat Turner, the leader of the 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia that led to the deaths of almost sixty men, women, and children. Published at the height of the civil rights movement, the novel draws upon the historical Nat Turner’s confession to his attorney, made as he awaited execution in a Virginia jail. This powerful narrative, steeped in the brutal and tragic history of American slavery, reveals a Turner who is neither a hero nor a demon, but rather a man driven to exact vengeance for the centuries of injustice inflicted upon his people.